One of the best indicators of a leader’s success is independence…for both leaders and followers.
When leaders know that their followers can function effectively without them, they know that they’ve done a good job leading.
Independence sign
During my time in the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) position at a mortgage banking firm, I got my first glimpse of independence. Much of my time was spent in meetings. During virtually every meeting one, or several, C-level executives would ask for a break so that they could visit their department(s) to make sure that things were going as planned.
One day, one of the returning executives said to me: You never leave. Don’t you need to know what’s happening in your department? I responded: No, they know what they need to do and they do it well; they don’t need me to make it happen. To which he responded: That must be nice.
It was nice. It was also the first time I realized that my staff’s ability to function without me was a sign of their independence from me…their self-sufficiency.
As much as I’d like to say that their independence was the result of a conscious effort on my part, the truth is that the result was the byproduct of a purely self-serving motive. I wanted to learn and grow personally and professionally. I knew that I had to get things off my desk and onto theirs in order to be able to do that. This self-serving desire is what drove me to the totally unexpected result of a self-sufficient work team.
With independence, loss
There is the potential for a sense of loss for the leader. Feeling that you’re no longer essential to your followers success can trigger a sense of loss…a loss of purpose, of value, of being valued.
The good news is that this sense of loss is easily overcome by awareness of the independence the leader gains as a result of helping others become independent.
Leader independence
There is a sense of accomplishment for the leader in knowing that he’s prepared others to deal effectively, and independently, with life’s challenges. In addition to this accomplishment, the leader gains independence to grow personally and professionally in any way he chooses. It takes time and effort to expand your knowledge, capabilities and skills in other areas of interest to you.
One of the things that I discovered as a fractional (part-time) CFO was that I could see farther down the road than my clients. Not because I was smarter than they were, but because I wasn’t dealing with the daily challenges of running their business that they were.
This ability to see farther down the road, which was as true in my tenure as the CFO of the mortgage banking firm as in my work with clients, helped me see what was needed to take that business to the next level. This led me to understand that independence (self-sufficiency) is a moving target.
Independence: A moving target
Awareness that there is always another level of excellence to achieve, helped me realize that independence is a moving target. I realized that my role as leader, whether in a corporate leadership role or as a consultant, was to help whomever I was working with achieve ever-increasing levels of self-sufficiency, i.e. independence at each new level of excellence.
This insight also gave me direction into what knowledge, capabilities and skills I needed to develop in order to help the people with whom I am working get to the next level. Of course I had to have an interest in developing these skills and abilities if I were to become good at them.
In those instances when my interest didn’t exist, I’d find resources that could fill the gap left by my disinterest. This further enhanced my independence as a leader. I didn’t have to develop skills and abilities that didn’t interest me, yet it enabled me to continue my role as a leader in providing others what they needed to get to the next level…and become self-sufficient at that new level.
These insights helped me realize that the freedom I was gaining to pursue what interested me, and become good at new skills, and use them to improve the lives of others, more than offset any feeling of loss that I might have previously experienced.
Takeaways
A leader’s success can be measured by the independence, self-sufficiency, others gain at ever-increasing levels of success in whatever they choose to do.
There is the potential for leaders to feel a sense of loss as they realize that others are no longer reliant on them to meet daily challenges.
The sense of loss is more than offset by awareness that:
- You’ve enriched others’ lives by making them independent (self-sufficient).
- Your value lies in your ability to take them to ever-increasing levels of capability.
- Your independence enables you to grow in ways that are important to you…which has the added advantage of increasing your ability to enrich the lives of others.
This is why, in my opening sentence, I refer to the independence gained by both leaders and followers. It’s further evidence of the accuracy of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:
“It Is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life
that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself..”
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If you’d like the leaders in your organization to learn how to use the numbers more effectively and dramatically improve the productivity of your workforce, contact me to learn more about these resources:
Resources
Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program helps you identify and nurture emerging leaders who elevate all around them to higher levels of performance and greater job enjoyment.
Financial Awareness & Strategy program where employees learn to identify opportunities to improve financial results and prioritize these opportunities on the basis of which produces the greatest impact with the least effort. Greater financial awareness = Better decisions.
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